[Holy] Guide to Raid Healing with the PvP 4-set

Hey Pally forum. I just wanted to throw this guide together for players curious about how this pvp 4-set raiding build works and try to get some more information about it together in one place. Feel free to add anything if it seems I've left something out.

UPDATE: As of Patch 5.1, the season 12 gladiator's 4-set bonus no longer grants holy power when EF is cast with Divine Purpose, noticeably weakening the power of this healing style for raiding content.

Although this healing style is weaker than it was pre-patch, it is still a solid healing boost if you do not have access to the 4-piece pve (white tiger set) which has now been buffed to give a 2 second reduction to the HS cooldown (previously 1 second). The increase to holy power generation is still strong enough to offset a small stat loss from using lower ilvl gear.

What is it?
Raid healing with the PvP 4-set revolves around massive use of holy power rather than mana spells to do our heavy lifting. This works because the pvp 4-set allows very high HP generation, allowing us to compensate for the lower than normal spirit we'll be running because of the lower stat weighting on pvp gear.

The Talent Build
Tier 1 - Pursuit of Justice (recommended) or Speed of Light. Long Arm of the Law is going to be a weaker option in most cases because you will want to be using most of your GCD's for holy shock or crusader strike. Pursuit is the stronger option in most cases because you will constantly be generating holy power, giving it an edge on most fights.

Tier 2 - User's choice. I recommend Fist of Justice for most fights since the shortened cd and range increase on our instant stun will frequently be more useful than a cc with a cast time. Burden of Guilt is by far the weakest option here since very few boss fights have snareable adds, and in those situations, snares are better provided by classes with AoE slows like hunters or shaman.

Tier 3 - Eternal Flame. Necessary to the build as this is going to be your go-to heal.

Tier 4 - User's choice depending on the fight. For most fights, I recommend clemency or unbreakable spirit. Clemency doubles our utility spells which have a lot of uses this tier. Hand of Sacrifice and Hand of Protection in particular, though Freedom and Salvation have strong niches as well. Unbreakable Spirit is a strong choice if you don't need the utility of clemency. You'll be using a lot of holy power, so this becomes a very strong option, allowing us to use a second LoH on some fights, and giving more frequent use of our personal defensive abilities. Hand of Purity is generally a weaker choice here, but it is powerful on specific fights.

Gearing
First, you obviously need your pvp 4-set. The 4 armor slots you choose are up to you, though I recommend gloves, shoulders, helm and chest. The pvp legs do not have spirit or mastery, making them our weakest piece in the set for pve content.

For reforging, gemming and enchanting, you will still want a good amount of spirit. Generally speaking, intellect is slightly better than spirit, since you'll be depending more on holy power than mana for healing. You still want a good amount of spirit for those times when you do not get DP procs. After this, gear for mastery. Crit is by far our weakest stat for PvE healing. Haste thresholds for EF are 15% and 25%. The 15% mark is easily reachable with raid buffs and should not cost you much to reach. The 25% mark is tough in normal mode gear and will cost you too much spirit and mastery to be a viable goal. Since we won't be using many cast time spells, haste is far less valuable with this build. Additionally, Infusion of Light procs severely reduce the value of haste for spells like DL and HR.

Glyphs
Glyphs don't change much with this build. The notable ones are:
Beacon of Light - Probably the most influential in this build. It allows beacon swapping that is gcd free. Macro BoL to Divine Light and you can boost your holy power generation considerably. Infusion proc, beacon, divine light allows you to generate an extra holy power without wasting an extra gcd to move beacon.
Protector of the Innocent - has a lot of synergy with this build. You will be casting EF a lot, so this glyph provides an exceptional amount of self-healing that is mana and gcd free.
Divinity - 10% of our mana for free is a pretty strong option, particularly combined with Unbreakable Spirit.
Divine Protection - nice for fights with a lot of physical damage (zor'lok and garalon are good examples). If you can spare the glyph slot, its a solid option.
Divine Light - not as strong with this build. You want to constantly be generating holy power, so it is often better to spend the 9 seconds of unglyphed divine plea time meleeing the boss and rotation HS and CS rather than spending a long cast time.

In that chain of casting, you've only spent time on instant casts. You've also only spent about 60k mana over a span of about 14 seconds, meaning you will have passively regenerated almost half of the cost. In addition, you now have 5 EF's rolling on the raid, all of which feed heals constantly to your beacon target (probably the tank). On top of that, EF is constantly building Illuminated Healing shields on all of its targets.

The big differences from the typical holy pally playstyle are the way we manage our casting, and burst AoE healing. For this playstyle, we don't care about being efficient in terms of healing vs. overhealing. If you have EF rolling on a whole raid, you're going to generate a lot of excess healing. Normally, that would mean you aren't being mana efficient. But because you're constantly generating and dumping holy power, your overhealing is not costing you mana. The only mana costs are HS and CS.

As for AoE burst healing, you will approach it a bit differently. In the past, our solution was to rotate holy radiance, holy shock, crusader strike and light of dawn. Although that rotation is powerful, it is very mana intensive. It can be supplemented with Light's Hammer, but the real key is knowing when the damage will be coming. On Zor'Lok for example, Force and Verve is very healing intensive. But if we have EF rolling on the raid, a large amount of healing is already taken care of between mastery shields that are constantly being built up and by the HoT itself. Rather than try to burst heal the damage as it comes, our tools now allow us to preempt the damage by rolling a powerful HoT on the raid, meaning we can spend time using HS/CS to generate holy power that can be dumped into refreshing EF or used for LoD depending on the raid's position.

Pros and Cons
This playstyle changes our approach to healing significantly. Because of that, there are inherent advantages and disadvantages. Our fellow healers in raids should be made aware of how this affects the raid, because the result changes how they will want to play as well, if they are synergize well with a pally running this build.

Advantages:
- We no longer depend on frequent castable spells like HL and DL. Our rotation is primarily focused on instant casts (HS, CS, EF). Because of this, we become much more mobile healers.
- More stable tank healing (through beacon). EF blanketing results in a constant and fairly stable stream of healing constantly feeding to the tank. Rather than needing periodic large heals, this playstyle helps to smooth out the amount of direct healing needed by the tank.
- Endurance. Our mana endurance is now much longer during periods of steady raid damage. Because of this, other healers will be able to spend time at reduced healing or actively generating mana (shaman's telluric currents, for example), while our mana-light rotation continues to keep a raid healthy.

Disadvantages:
- Proc dependancy. Although it is still a powerful playstyle, the occasional dry spell of divine purpose procs can hurt us, occasionally forcing heavier use of HL/DL to compensate for high damage periods. In this scenario, we may need other healers to smooth over a rough spot while we regenerate our HP stack and recover mana.
- AoE burst healing. Not exactly a weak point, but the approach is much different. We will be EF blanketing to cover damage, but other healers will have to do more work while our HoTs kick in. Alternatively, we can revert to HR/LoD rotation, but this is very mana intensive and will cost us in the long run.
- Reliance on CS for HP generation. Because we want to constantly be casting 3HP EF's, we need to generate holy power through CS as well as HS. In some cases though, we can't be near an enemy mob to hit. In extreme cases, this makes the playstyle less viable, but there are ways to work around it. We gain the mobility so it is possible to drift in and out of melee range on many fights in order to keep our HP flowing.

NOTE: I've tried to update this for the 5.1 changes to our set bonuses. Please let me know if you see anything I've missed that is outdated.

Why use crusader strike for holy power? It costs 9000 mana and nets no healing, that's close to half the cost of a holy radiance. I've healed this way but found it much more effective to use holy radiance to build holy power.

Why use crusader strike for holy power? It costs 9000 mana and nets no healing, that's close to half the cost of a holy radiance. I've healed this way but found it much more effective to use holy radiance to build holy power.

Since the healing style revolves so much around using EF, you have the mana left over that using CS for Holy Power doesn't leave you mana-starved.

Why use crusader strike for holy power? It costs 9000 mana and nets no healing, that's close to half the cost of a holy radiance. I've healed this way but found it much more effective to use holy radiance to build holy power.

As a resto druid, I am fed up of being destroyed by my holy pala using this, but at the same time happy to be able to afk our progress fights. Really OP in the right hands, hpalas are just crazy right now. Really nice guide.

I must admit I waited quite some time getting the PvP 4 set since I was doing fine without it, but yesterday I finally budged and got it. And damn, does it feel overpowered. :P Really feels like you're cheating to be honest, I'd be really surprised if this stays this way, so I'll take advantage of it until then.

Oh and to contribute to the guide a little; glyph of Beacon of Light is listed twice.

Which fights do you guys utilize this? Personally I only use it on Garalon, since the fights seems ideal for it.

And a comment about this way of healing form my own experience: Holy Radiance should be in there every now and then, not because it's particularly needed for the healing, but because if I stick to CD, EF and HS I'll have way over 50% mana at the end of the fight, which is an outright waste

Just flipping through WoL's and basing this on my experiences with EF spamming, its rarely beneficial to CS instead of HR. Holy Radiance still makes up anywhere from 4-15% of our healing and buff's our Holy Shock to heal for an additional 100%. Personally I can think of maybe 1-2 occasions where I have actually cast CS and it only occurs when I'm lacking the mana to HR. HR also scales with haste as holy where if I'm not mistaken CS only scales with haste as Ret. Currently my HR is about 2.1s with just seal of insight and not the haste buff from raids. The healing gains from CS and Insight glyph are a complete joke as we CS for about 3k. Insight Glyph heals for 30% of melee attacks and 30% of cs. We white swing and cs for like 3k leaving a pitiful 900 heal for a 9k mana and a gcd.

If the absolute shit amount of heals from CS wasn't enough, CS counts as a "Melee Attack" meaning you need 7.5% melee hit for it to not miss. If a CS misses that is a waste of mana and yield's you nothing for the entire gcd. I haven't checked in the last 2 days or so but I believe our Auto Attack is still bugged with eternal flame. There are some occasions where EF will cause you to have an increased white swing timer, somewhere in the 5s+ range which makes this even less viable as where you would normally be auto attacking while not casting that can also be wasted.

As for Beacon swapping, that is also generally a bad idea if your doing any sort of hard mode encounter as a major source for our healing is our hots transferring to the tank with beacon. While it might be a nice increase to HP it's generally a net loss in healing.

As for "Healing Rotation" it's generally going to be a priority not a set rotation because you need to use gcd's on things like sac freedom bop etc:

3hp EF>HS>HR

That's virtually it. Beacon on which ever tank is going to be taking considerably more damage, roll EF on both tanks, then EF anyone under 100%. If everyone is topped off, try to roll EF's on who ever is most likely to take damage, generally the melee.

Originally Posted by Claeshj

Which fights do you guys utilize this? Personally I only use it on Garalon, since the fights seems ideal for it.

This is good on basically every single fight, a few guilds still run traditional hpallies that spam just tanks, Blood legion for example has Ndozz just playing as blizz intended. Garalon is the best fight for this style though, constant aoe raid damage that is 100% predictable.

HR also scales with haste as holy where if I'm not mistaken CS only scales with haste as Ret.

Wrong.

Originally Posted by Tandoor

Currently my HR is about 2.1s with just seal of insight and not the haste buff from raids. The healing gains from CS and Insight glyph are a complete joke as we CS for about 3k. Insight Glyph heals for 30% of melee attacks and 30% of cs. We white swing and cs for like 3k leaving a pitiful 900 heal for a 9k mana and a gcd.

It sounds like you have more haste than most. I have a fair amount of haste on my gear (all reforged to mastery of course) and I am at 2.2s cast. CS isn't about the mana or the heals. It is about the on demand holy power that only costs a global and is not going to overheal and is still 100% useful when the raid is topped. HR is good as well but not to the exclusivity of cs. They should be about the same.

Originally Posted by Tandoor

As for Beacon swapping, that is also generally a bad idea if your doing any sort of hard mode encounter as a major source for our healing is our hots transferring to the tank with beacon. While it might be a nice increase to HP it's generally a net loss in healing.

Beacon swapping for tower of radiance is bad I agree with you there. But with the glyph there really isn't a reason to use it as a constant funnel of heals to the person who needs it the most, and that isn't always the tank, I usually try to switch it when I EF the tank as well.

---------- Post added 2012-11-17 at 09:23 AM ----------

Originally Posted by Tandoor

In our raid we had pretty low incoming damage so my main focus was to HPS as hard as possible on the boss and basically ignore the rest of the fight

It sounds like you have more haste than most. I have a fair amount of haste on my gear (all reforged to mastery of course) and I am at 2.2s cast. CS isn't about the mana or the heals. It is about the on demand holy power that only costs a global and is not going to overheal and is still 100% useful when the raid is topped. HR is good as well but not to the exclusivity of cs. They should be about the same.

My haste is basically anything I got as a consequence to taking a higher spirit item. I'm reforging for pure HPM with haste at the lowest value of my secondaries. Haste should be looked at for the extra tick in the 3-4k range but even that has been negligible. If you think it's worth it to pull beacon off your tank and lower the EH of your tanks that's your prerogative but so far its generally been a bad idea.

CS becomes an arguement more of practicality vs actual results. From your responses your already on the edge of when it's worth it and when it's not. Basically it MIGHT be worth it if the entire raid is topped and you are in melee range. Is it worth it to go out of your way and stay in melee range though? No, it isn't. Most bosses it's not worth it to be in melee as we get targeted with ranged abilities by the bosses, where monks as an example don't. We are generally wanting to be max melee range or further. The only bosses in MSV as an example are garajal and spirit kings that it would be feasible to stay in melee for the entire fight. In HoF Vizier Amber shaper and Garalon are the only bosses that it's even remotely possible as an hpally to cs.

You say CS is 100% useful while the raid is topped, when in reality it probably contributes to OH nearly as much as HR. If HR overheals it leaves a shield. If you CS and EF it is also reasonable to assume a marginal chunk of the extra EF you just gained goes to OH.

Just flipping through WoL's and basing this on my experiences with EF spamming, its rarely beneficial to CS instead of HR. Holy Radiance still makes up anywhere from 4-15% of our healing and buff's our Holy Shock to heal for an additional 100%. Personally I can think of maybe 1-2 occasions where I have actually cast CS and it only occurs when I'm lacking the mana to HR. HR also scales with haste as holy where if I'm not mistaken CS only scales with haste as Ret. Currently my HR is about 2.1s with just seal of insight and not the haste buff from raids. The healing gains from CS and Insight glyph are a complete joke as we CS for about 3k. Insight Glyph heals for 30% of melee attacks and 30% of cs. We white swing and cs for like 3k leaving a pitiful 900 heal for a 9k mana and a gcd.

There are a lot of situations where its either not necessary or beneficial or ideal to spend the extra time casting HR. If the raid is spread out, HR will not be efficient because you likely won't hit more than 2 or 3 people. HR is also a longer cast time if you don't have Infusion up, so CS is still a quicker path to your next EF. Also, CS allows you to remain mobile, while building HP.

Originally Posted by Tandoor

If the absolute shit amount of heals from CS wasn't enough, CS counts as a "Melee Attack" meaning you need 7.5% melee hit for it to not miss. If a CS misses that is a waste of mana and yield's you nothing for the entire gcd. I haven't checked in the last 2 days or so but I believe our Auto Attack is still bugged with eternal flame. There are some occasions where EF will cause you to have an increased white swing timer, somewhere in the 5s+ range which makes this even less viable as where you would normally be auto attacking while not casting that can also be wasted.

Valid point, but in the end, it comes back to the difference between casting HR or CS. You either cast a 2.5s spell which may overheal or not hit an efficient number of targets, or you spend a single gcd on an instant that is going to be successful 85 times out of 100.

As for the EF swing timer bug, that is correct right now. We can only hope that it gets fixed soon.

Originally Posted by Tandoor

As for Beacon swapping, that is also generally a bad idea if your doing any sort of hard mode encounter as a major source for our healing is our hots transferring to the tank with beacon. While it might be a nice increase to HP it's generally a net loss in healing.

Although I agree with this in general, it comes down to the fight and what kind of damage the tank is taking. It is still a good technique to use for tank swaps (Feng for example), or if you know your tank isn't going to take much damage for a period and someone else needs the heals streaming to beacon.

If you think it's worth it to pull beacon off your tank and lower the EH of your tanks that's your prerogative but so far its generally been a bad idea.

It isn't always the tank who needs a funnel of heals. Yes he is the one who often needs it but there are exceptions. If you are good at what you do you will be able to identify those and benefit. If you aren't then don't bother. You need to understand that I am combating your rigid mindset which seems to only go in a single direction while trying to discount everyone else.

Originally Posted by Tandoor

CS becomes an arguement more of practicality vs actual results. From your responses your already on the edge of when it's worth it and when it's not. Basically it MIGHT be worth it if the entire raid is topped and you are in melee range. Is it worth it to go out of your way and stay in melee range though? No, it isn't. Most bosses it's not worth it to be in melee as we get targeted with ranged abilities by the bosses, where monks as an example don't. We are generally wanting to be max melee range or further. The only bosses in MSV as an example are garajal and spirit kings that it would be feasible to stay in melee for the entire fight. In HoF Vizier Amber shaper and Garalon are the only bosses that it's even remotely possible as an hpally to cs.

There is a time and a place for HR and CS. And as far as your bosses you can't be in melee range of, take off Empress.http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/b...?s=4675&e=5196
The seal of insight gain from cs'ing made each cs only cost approx 7.5k mana which is just under 3x less than an HR. I also had a monk healer there as well and due to group synergy I was more interested in healing up spikes than focusing on eeking out the most hps. CS allowed me to get out those EF's to the people who needed them that much quicker. I could trust the monk to get the melee up with his serpent gifts (which our raid does use) and his uplift. You aren't seeing the big picture here. I could have probably use HR more and got more healing but honestly cs'ing helped stabilize the raid better and the melee who I would have used the hr on rarely needed it due to gift of the serpent, light's hammer, and SCK.

Originally Posted by Tandoor

You say CS is 100% useful while the raid is topped, when in reality it probably contributes to OH nearly as much as HR. If HR overheals it leaves a shield. If you CS and EF it is also reasonable to assume a marginal chunk of the extra EF you just gained goes to OH.

How do you know that your HR isn't causing future EF overheal? You say that cs is contributing to EF overheal... how does HR overheal before the EF overheal make it any better? You justify EF overhealing with even more HR overhealing? Your logic is flawed. Stop trying to discount CS.

What I am trying to say is that HR and CS are both good in different situations and should be used with wise spell selection. Some are going to favor one or the other but a mix and match is the best approach.

It isn't always the tank who needs a funnel of heals. Yes he is the one who often needs it but there are exceptions. If you are good at what you do you will be able to identify those and benefit. If you aren't then don't bother. You need to understand that I am combating your rigid mindset which seems to only go in a single direction while trying to discount everyone else.

There is a time and a place for HR and CS. And as far as your bosses you can't be in melee range of, take off Empress.
The seal of insight gain from cs'ing made each cs only cost approx 7.5k mana which is just under 3x less than an HR. I also had a monk healer there as well and due to group synergy I was more interested in healing up spikes than focusing on eeking out the most hps. CS allowed me to get out those EF's to the people who needed them that much quicker. I could trust the monk to get the melee up with his serpent gifts (which our raid does use) and his uplift. You aren't seeing the big picture here. I could have probably use HR more and got more healing but honestly cs'ing helped stabilize the raid better and the melee who I would have used the hr on rarely needed it due to gift of the serpent, light's hammer, and SCK.

How do you know that your HR isn't causing future EF overheal? You say that cs is contributing to EF overheal... how does HR overheal before the EF overheal make it any better? You justify EF overhealing with even more HR overhealing? Your logic is flawed. Stop trying to discount CS.

What I am trying to say is that HR and CS are both good in different situations and should be used with wise spell selection. Some are going to favor one or the other but a mix and match is the best approach.

Perhaps in 10man a good chunk of what you say holds true, in 25man I've literally had no need to CS. The mana difference from cs -> hr is also not important as with 4p pvp mana becomes a non issue with any decent gear. My point about EF overhealing from CS was that if your going to overheal anyways you can't discourage using HR just due to it's likeliness to overheal.

10m might also be different on a few bosses as for 25 empress I was splashing the ranged aoe damage on melee when I tried it the first week. You can link parses where you rank high and use cs, but I can also link high parses with little to no cs in pretty much every 25man encounter.

My post above also said CS might have a few instances where it is beneficial but it's not generally worth the loss in dps that can be incurred by having a range in melee. If it does also pull a head in a few cases then it does so by such a small margin that this doesn't warrant telling people to do it.

Ranking in LFR means nothing more than you had a group that managed to take more damage than the rest. Not to meantion most people don't log LFR. I just went and ran a few runs and managed to get a few decent parses, but only on kills where people absolutely sucked.

If you look at my logs you can see just the abnormal amount of shit people suck that allow you to rank. I have stated that I felt my style was better, the OP and a few others have stated CS'ing is much better, while I can see it's potential uses my point has more gone from it's not worth it, to it's not as valuable as people make it seem. Will CS bump your healing up a few %, maybe. Is it worth hassling about trying to do, probably not. Perhaps if I raided 10man's I might see the use of something other than HR.

Unfortunately this is actually rather difficulty to just math out as there are a lot of variables. Hence the back and forth with what I feel have been valid points going both ways.